The Guo Laboratory

The Guo Laboratory’s research is focused on deciphering the pathogenicity of genetic variants in cardiovascular diseases. With the development of medical genetics and low-cost, rapid DNA sequencing technologies, a large number of genetic variants associated with cardiovascular diseases have been identified and released in population databases including ClinVar, ClinVar Miner, dbSNP, Exome sequencing project, 1000Genomes, and Human Gene Mutation Database. However, about 40% of total variants known as variants of uncertain significance, are still not clearly defined to be classified as pathogenic or benign. This gap in knowledge significantly obstructs potential widespread clinical application of the genetic information and causes anxiety and stress to genetic variant carriers. In addition, most of cardiovascular diseases are polygenic diseases that result from the additive inheritance of multiple genetic variants at different loci alongside interactions with environmental factors, culminating in an affected disease phenotype. Thus, our laboratory is thriving to understand the genetic mechanisms underlying cardiovascular diseases and develop precise prevention and treatment for genetic variants carriers. We utilize computational and biological systems such as stem cells, animal models, and human samples to address these questions.